peck!"

Diantha smiled. "I ought to do it easily by this time. Father's got to
have hot bread for supper--or thinks he has!--and I've made 'em--every
night when I was at home for this ten years back!"

"I guess you have," said Mrs. Bell proudly. "You were only eleven when
you made your first batch. I can remember just as well! I had one of my
bad headaches that night--and it did seem as if I couldn't sit up! But
your Father's got to have his biscuit whether or no. And you said, 'Now
Mother you lie right still on that sofa and let me do it! I can!' And
you could!--you did! They were bettern' mine that first time--and your
Father praised 'em--and you've been at it ever since."

"Yes," said Diantha, with a deeper note of feeling than her mother
caught, "I've been at it ever since!"

"Except when you were teaching school," pursued her mother.

"Except when I taught school at Medville," Diantha corrected. "When I
taught here I made 'em just the same."

"So you did," agreed her mother. "So you did! No matter how tired you
were--you wouldn't admit it. You always were the best child!"

"If I was tired it was not of making biscuits anyhow. I was tired enough
of teaching school though. I've got something to tell you, presently,
Mother."

She covered the biscuits with a light cloth and set them on the shelf
over the stove; then poked among the greasewood roots to find what
she wanted and started a fire. "Why _don't_ you get an oil stove? Or a
gasoline? It would be a lot easier."

"Yes," her mother agreed. "I've wanted one for twenty years; but you
know your Father won't have one in the house. He says they're dangerous.
What are you going to tell me, dear? I do hope you and Ross haven't
quarrelled."

"No indeed we haven't, Mother. Ross is splendid. Only--"

"Only what, Dinah?"

"Only he's so tied up!" said the girl, brushing every chip from the
hearth. "He's perfectly helpless there, with that mother of his--and
those four sisters."

"Ross is a good son," said Mrs. Bell, "and a good brother. I never saw a
better. He's certainly doing his duty. Now if his father'd lived you two
could have got married by this time maybe, though you're too young yet."

Diantha washed and put away the dishes she had used, saw that the pantry
was in its usual delicate order, and proceeded to set the table, with
light steps and no clatter of dishes.

"I'm twenty-one," she said.

"Yes, you're twenty-one," her mother allowed. "It don't